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By Thomas WrightThe optics at the G20 summit in Hamburg were striking. On the one side, the United States. On the other, 18 nations and the European Union. While the dividing issue was climate change, for many, this symbolized something larger. In a video that instantly went viral, Chris Uhlmann of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation put it pithily: “The G20 had become the G19 plus one.” The United States had abdicated its global leadership role and the rest of the world stood aghast, united as one, it seemed.That’s a compelling picture, but one that obscures more than it reveals. There is no G19; there is no united front. It is true that Trump was utterly isolated on climate change. And yes, the United States is questioning the merits of the international order it created and continues to benefit from. But the divisions in the G20 run far deeper than frustration with Trump: The body itself is a vestige of a world that no long exists.The assumption underpinning the G20, which took hold in the 2000s, was that all major powers were converging around a single model of liberal international order. As they traded and interacted with each other, the thinking went, they would become “responsible stakeholders” in that order, sharing challenges and limiting their geopolitical differences. Over time, they would liberalize their political and economic systems, even if some fell short of fully fledged liberal democracy.The apex of this convergence occurred in late 2008. As the world reeled from the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, the United States hosted the first G20 leaders’ summit, recognizing that all member states had a shared interest in averting economic catastrophe. Hopes were high that the G20 could expand its remit to global security and transnational challenges.Since then, the geopolitical story has been the dissolution of this global consensus—convergence replaced by divergence. In recent years, a rising Russia and China have come to see the liberal order as a threat and pushed back against it, both domestically and internationally. Globalization went from promising prosperity for all to representing stagnation and outsourcing. Hopes of progress in the Middle East faded after the Iraq War and the failure of the Arab Awakening. Starting in the Obama years, Americans began to question whether they should bear the brunt of the burden of global leadership.Broadly speaking, the world now seems to be dividing into three camps, both between and within the major powers. The first camp, the Restorationists, want to return to the way things were. They want the United States to once again embrace the mantle of global leadership, and for European nations to integrate further. They believe in globalization and multilateral cooperation. They are usually on the center-left and the center-right in western nations. Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, and Shinzo Abe, all reside in this camp.The second camp, the Revisionists, wish to tear down the old order and replace it with something new. The Russians want to see a 19th-century-style great-power concert based around spheres of influence. The Chinese also covet a regional sphere of influence, although, unlike the Russians, they have a stake in maintaining the global economic order. Then there are those in the west on the far right and far left who want to bring globalization to an end and dissolve the U.S.-led system of alliances.In the third camp are the Populists. They want to do less to uphold the international order and focus on a far narrower set of national interests. They tend to blame other nations for their problems. They seem comfortable with the demise of many elements of the order—trade pacts and security commitments—but they do not seek to replace it with anything else. Riding the global wave of nationalist sentiment, they want to do less and get more. Their ranks include Trump, Britain’s pro-Brexit politicians, an increasingly authoritarian Turkey, as well many others within western societies from Bernie Sanders on the left to Ted Cruz on the right.The world had begun to diverge along these lines well before November 8, 2016. Prior to the U.S. presidential election, the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership were in trouble. China was seeking to expand its influence in the South China Sea. Russia had annexed Crimea. And the European Union was facing an existential crisis. The United States was pushing back—insufficiently perhaps, but pushing back nonetheless. Obama sought to impose costs on Putin’s Russia, promoted free trade, and spoke out against spheres of influence. All this largely ended with the election of Trump. He sought friendship with Russia, pressured U.S. allies, threatened to launch a trade war, and all but said that the days of American leadership of the international order were over.Trump’s election confirmed that the era of convergence is at an end. Now, the world is trying to figure out just how weak or resilient the international order is. They know that Trump is a critic but they also know that he is constrained by more mainstream members of his cabinet and by various treaty obligations and troop deployments. They think the status quo is unsustainable, but they don’t know how it could come to an end. The Revisionists don’t want to act prematurely and run the risk of isolation, counter-reaction, and failure. With such a volatile and indecisive U.S. president, the initial impulse is caution. And yet, the initial unraveling has begun in earnest.The G20 summit in Hamburg offered a glimpse of the future. Suddenly, gone were the days when observing the G20 was like watching paint dry. This time, the leaders debated fundamental questions of whether the global economy should remain open or closed. They argued about climate change. They nervously watched as Trump tried to forge a partnership with Putin. Xi Jinping, the president of China, tried to position his country as a more responsible power than the United States while Putin took center stage. The Europeans, meanwhile, tried to preserve some semblance of transatlantic unity.One of the more striking elements of the summit was the sense that, under Trump, America is far less capable than usual. Much has been made of the failure to appoint senior officials at the State Department and Pentagon, and of the dysfunction within the White House. The strain is starting to show. The Trump administration made a litany of errors in Germany, both small and large, that raised real doubts as to its competence. The most egregious was the meeting with Putin where Trump agreed to create a joint U.S.-Russian task force on cyber security, an idea that did not survive 24 hours. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s read-out on the rest of the discussion was unintentionally damning. He spoke about how the United States and Russia shared the same objectives, how they wanted to move past the election hacking to focus on the future, and how Putin may have the right solution to end the war in Syria. Trump and Tillerson had Russia experts and experienced national security professionals on hand, yet inexplicably excluded them from the meeting.Equally damaging: There was no G20 statement on North Korea’s increasingly bellicose threats and actions. Had Trump pushed for it, it is highly likely that he could have secured an agreement to contain the Kim regime. Instead, he accepted without argument Russia and China’s objections that the G20 should not deal with security matters.There are, of course, the lower-order flubs, too—largely matters of optics, but still of consequence: a press release that confused China (formally, the People’s Republic of China) with Taiwan (formally, the Republic of China); Ivanka Trump sitting in for her father at the G20 table, reinforcing the narrative that her father’s administration is a family-run business. Tellingly, Trump broke with tradition and did not hold a post-summit press conference. One likely explanation is that his staff worried about what he might say, particularly regarding his meeting with Putin.The message of Hamburg, like Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia, is that it is possible to manipulate a gullible U.S. president. Every meeting with him is a strategic opportunity. This is now the game other nations are playing.Over the next five years, the character and tempo of this new era of strategic competition will come into focus. Contrary to widespread belief, major conflict between the great powers is unlikely. Russia and China have no intention of fighting the United States directly—in fact, the reverse is true. The cost is too high. Instead, we will see nations compete with all measures short of war to achieve their objectives, including economic tools like sanctions, tariffs, and trade agreements; cyberwarfare of the type pioneered by Russia and China; proxy wars like the Syrian civil war; formal and informal alliances; coercive diplomacy; and soft power. The fact that the world is interconnected makes many of these weapons even more effective than they would otherwise be.Each of the three camps has major decisions to make. Restorationist governments must decide whether they will fill part of the vacuum left by the Trump administration. But make no mistake: it will be a heavy lift, including in a Europe that remains deeply divided over the future it wants. In the United States, Restorationist politicians and foreign-policy advisers will have to make the case to the American people for why the country should return to a traditional internationalist foreign policy. It won’t be easy. The issue is whether they can regain the American presidency and if it will then be possible to course correct. The Restorationists will need to reflect on what they could have done differently over the past decade, how a future president could reverse the unraveling of the international order, and how internationalism benefit—and be seen to benefit—all, not just the elite.The Revisionists must decide how much they want to test America’s resolve. It’s widely believed that Xi is playing it safe as the 19th Party Congress approaches, but he may grow more assertive in 2018. However, the U.S. alliance system in Asia remains intact and there are strong anti-China impulses in the White House. Any bold Chinese move could backfire. But Putin remains the biggest question mark. While he achieved his objectives in Hamburg, a true partnership with the United States is still out of reach, not because Trump is skeptical of him, but because he is too weak to deliver on it. Once his reelection in 2018 is out of the way, Putin will have to decide whether to capitalize on Trump’s ambiguous stance on the international order, and make a big play to accomplish something that could not be reversed by a future U.S. president, such as breaking NATO.The Populists also have choices. They want to have their cake and eat it to—doing less, but without suffering the consequences—but life does not work like that. If Trump succeeds in imposing his America First worldview on U.S. foreign policy, he will be confronted with one horrible choice after another as the international order fractures on his watch. The easier path may be to listen to his secretary of defense, national security adviser, and chief economic adviser, and hold the line. They also have to decide to recognize Russia for what it is—a geopolitical competitor to the United States—or to continue to follow the siren song of partnership. At some point, Trump will also be confronted with a harsh reality on the economic front—in the 21st century, it is impossible to have a healthy national economy without a healthy global economy. Beggar thy neighbor policies will not work, especially in an economic crisis.Above all, Americans need to understand that the post-Cold War era is over. The problem is not just Trump’s nationalism. It is that the very idea of convergence, which the G20 symbolizes, has been pulverized under the strains of the global recession, the failure of the Arab Awakening, Russian and Chinese revisionism, and western populism. Fundamental questions about the future of international order are back on the table. The world’s largest nations still need to cooperate but it will be much more difficult than before. Events in Hamburg were just a taste of what is yet to come.

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https://www.brookings.edu/events/all-measures-short-of-war-the-contest-for-the-21st-century-and-the-future-of-american-power/All measures short of war: The contest for the 21st century and the future of American powerhttp://webfeeds.brookings.edu/~/333823322/0/brookingsrss/experts/wrightt~All-measures-short-of-war-The-contest-for-the-st-century-and-the-future-of-American-power/
Thu, 25 May 2017 19:51:16 +0000https://www.brookings.edu/?post_type=event&p=405825

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After two decades of unprecedented cooperation between the major nations, great power competition has returned. Russia and China are seeking spheres of influence and doubts surround the United States’ commitment to maintaining a liberal international order. But what will geopolitical competition look like in the 21st century?

In his new book, “All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the 21st Century and the Future of American Power,” Thomas Wright, director of the Center on the United States and Europe and fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy, examines this new era of strategic competition. Wright shows why the post-Cold War era of convergence came to an end and how major powers are now using interdependence to gain a strategic advantage over their rivals. He argues that the great powers all seek to avoid a major war with each other but will compete will all measures short of that, including cyber war, economic war, proxy war, and coercive diplomacy.

Following opening remarks from Wright, Susan Glasser, chief international affairs columnist with Politico, moderated a conversation among Wright, Gérard Araud, ambassador of France to the United States, and Robert Kagan, senior fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. The discussion considered a new American strategy—responsible competition—for navigating these challenges and strengthening the liberal order.

Presidential trips are hard to assess. George H.W. Bush threw up on the Japanese prime minister; he was sick. Bill Clinton went to China without going to Japan, a big no-no. Someone threw a shoe at George W. Bush; he ducked. President Barack Obama failed to meet with human-rights activists in China. His speech was censored on Chinese television.

These all passed for big problems. Then again, those were different times.

The bar for President Donald Trump on his foreign trips this past week was, by comparison, unusually low. Everyone expected problems. Trump famously knows very little about foreign policy. In his March 17 meeting with Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, he confessed he had never heard of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership or the G-20. She made him a colorful map of the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence, which he apparently liked. So, when Trump embarked on a nine-day trip of five countries, it seemed particularly ambitious. Most new presidents go to Canada or Mexico.

Many foreign-policy experts said the trip was a mistake. Some suggested canceling it or splitting it into two separate trips. But when it went ahead, the general feeling was that if Trump avoided a disaster, it would be a success. Ideally, he would return to Washington knowing a bit more about the world, and America’s allies would be a little more reassured that he’s not the second coming of Wilhem II.

The Saudi Arabia leg of the trip was fairly normal. Yes, it was a very odd choice for a first stop, but the Washington national-security establishment had long wanted to reengage with Sunni-Arab states to balance against the Obama administration’s overtures to Iran. It’s a good bet that had Hillary Clinton won the electoral college, she would also have sought to revive the alliance with Riyadh, although probably not as the focus of her first trip. Trump loved his visit to the kingdom—no one flatters him quite like the Saudis. They danced with swords and presumably waved them toward Tehran. Everyone smiled, except for Steve Bannon.

Israel was a little tougher. Trump had recently betrayed Israeli intelligence by passing its closely guarded secrets to Moscow. He spent hardly any time at Yad Vashem, Israel’s holocaust memorial museum, which is a shame. You really can’t understand the magnitude of the Holocaust until you spend time at Buchenwald, Oświęcim, Dachau, or one of the major museums. Yad Vashem is a deeply moving experience. The room where candles are reflected millions of times in memory of the 1.5 million children who were murdered by the Nazis is enough to reduce anyone to tears.

Trump had a curious reaction to Yad Vashem, writing in the visitor’s book: “It is a great honor to be here with all my friends. So Amazing and Will Never Forget!” For the most part though, the Israel portion of the trip passed without catastrophe. That would come next.

Europe was always going to be harder. For one thing, European leaders tend not to flatter Trump. Unlike King Salman and the Israeli cabinet, they did not show up to the airport to greet him. They did not congratulate him on his electoral college victory. But they did make an effort. They cut the NATO gathering back to a mini summit, and scheduled some fun activities—a tour of the new headquarters and the dedication of monuments. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

The plan was for Trump to make a speech to dedicate the September 11 and Article 5 monument, which consists of a piece of the wreckage of the World Trade Center. Article 5, NATO’s mutual defense guarantee, was invoked only once, after 9/11, but it kept the peace in Europe during the Cold War. Trump had deliberately not endorsed it in his first four months in office, although his secretary of defense and vice president did. His speech to the gathered leaders was the perfect opportunity to do so. The day before, an administration official toldThe New York Times he would finally do so. He did not.

Trump’s failure to endorse Article 5 may come to be one of the greatest diplomatic blunders made by an American president since World War II.

Instead, Trump harangued European leaders for letting in refugees and for not meeting the 2 percent defense-spending target. It should not have come as a surprise. Trump needs enemies but beating up on your rivals is hard. You may have to make good on your threats. Beating up on your friends is easier. Given the occasion, it took some rhetorical effort to avoid endorsing Article 5. Dissing Europeans while dedicating a monument to remember the 888 European, 158 Canadian, and 2,396 American troops who died in Afghanistan took some doing.

Trump’s failure to personally endorse Article 5 may come to be one of the greatest diplomatic blunders made by an American president since World War II. We will not know for sure for some time. The thing about diplomatic mistakes is that they create new incentive structures that take a while to play out. Few noticed when Dean Acheson failed to include South Korea in the American defense perimeter until Kim Il Sung invaded six few months later. And no one paid much attention when April Glaspie, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told Saddam Hussein that the United States had no interest in his border dispute with Kuwait until he invaded a week later.

The problem is that Article 5 is ambiguous. It does not commit America to automatically defend a member state. It stipulates that each country should come to the aid of another with “such action as it deems necessary.” To compensate for this ambiguity, every American president has interpreted it as an automatic commitment to defend Europe from Russian aggression. This interpretation, combined with a credible military option, has functioned as an effective deterrent. Trump’s clear refusal fuels doubt about his commitment to defend Europe.

There were other incidents on the trip. Gary Cohn, a senior White House official who is close to Trump, told reporters that the United States has no position on sanctions on Russia before later reversing himself. Donald Tusk, the president of the EU Council, acknowledged that the United States and the EU could not agree on Russia. And Russia was not even on the agenda at the NATO mini-summit, likely a futile gesture to appease Trump.

This makes President Trump look weak and indecisive—weak because he is gutting America’s position of strength in Europe, and indecisive because his administration is at sixes and sevens on Article 5. Is he really in favor or opposed to it? No one knows for sure. And weakness and indecision can be provocative.

The great risk is that Vladimir Putin will see an opportunity. In Trump, Putin has a president who is largely aligned with his worldview. But Putin’s problem is that Trump is constrained. He cannot deliver sanctions relief. He cannot deliver a new Yalta agreement to grant Russia a sphere of influence. He cannot even meet Putin for a one-on-one summit, such is the level of opposition in the United States.

Trump acknowledged as much in a rambling press conference in February. He said:

[T]he false, horrible, fake reporting makes it much harder to make a deal with Russia. And probably Putin said “you know.” He’s sitting behind his desk and he’s saying “You know, I see what’s going on in the United States, I follow it closely. It’s going to be impossible for President Trump to ever get along with Russia because of all the pressure he’s got with this fake story.”

Why would Putin be satisfied with some warm words from Trump but no real deliverables? The key lies in understanding that a President Trump always had two advantages for Putin. One is that he might be able to make concessions that others would not. The other is that he may be a weaker adversary than the alternative.

Putin may now be tempted to turn on Trump and put him to the test. He may try to accomplish something that cannot be undone by Trump’s successor. Breaking NATO would be the biggest prize he could imagine. This week’s debacle increases that risk. NATO would probably never recover if a member state invoked Article 5 and the United States did little or nothing.

Mainstream elements in the Trump administration are acutely aware of this danger and they are working hard to remove the doubt created by the president. All other members of the national security team have come out in support of Article 5. Defense Secretary James Mattis has continued the troop deployments to the Baltics begun under President Obama. This and other operations ensure that a tripwire force of U.S. troops would be immediately entangled in a conflict in the event of a Russian invasion. But the test could come in other ways. It may be a more subtle form of hybrid war. The Pentagon is preparing for that, too, but Putin is resourceful.

Ultimately, Trump is the commander-in-chief. What he thinks and what he believes matters. He has a 30-year track record of criticizing America’s alliances and being favorable toward Russia. The real risk lies less in his proactive attempts to revolutionize American foreign policy—he is too weak bureaucratically for that—and more in what he will not do at a time of crisis.

We can hope that the Pentagon’s efforts to bolster deterrence will be enough. If they are, this trip will be recorded in history as a bit of a fiasco but little more than that. If it is not, and if Putin decides to truly test Trump, it be the opening page of a tragic story.

When NATO leaders meet in Brussels on May 25, they will participate in a ceremony to dedicate the new NATO headquarters. To the left of the main walkway, Chancellor Merkel will unveil a section of the Berlin Wall, signifying how NATO kept the peace during the Cold War. To the right, President Trump will unveil a section of the World Trade Center, officially named The 9/11 and Article 5 Memorial, signifying the only time in its history that NATO invoked Article 5, the mutual defense clause. Over 1,000 soldiers from America’s NATO allies subsequently died in the Afghanistan War.

The Brussels mini-summit is supposed to affirm the relevance of the alliance in the Trump era but there is a risk that it could severely undermine it. President Trump is the only American president since NATO’s founding who has not explicitly endorsed Article 5. His vice president and his secretary of defense have but he has not. If he fails to do so in Brussels, it could raise grave doubts about the credibility of the American security guarantee and provide Russia with an incentive to probe vulnerable Baltic states.

President Trump’s reticence on Article 5 has been largely overlooked because of his recent remark that NATO is no longer obsolete. But, a close reading of Trump’s statements reveal that his policy shift is much smaller than it appeared at the time.

President Trump is the only American president since NATO’s founding who has not explicitly endorsed Article 5.

Donald Trump’s first major statement about NATO came in March 2016 in an interview with The New York Times. He said the alliance was obsolete for several reasons. The first was that Russia no longer posed the threat the Soviet Union did. The second is that NATO was not focused on counterterrorism. The third is the financial cost of NATO to the United States.

In the year that followed, Trump doubled down on this critique, particularly on terrorism and burden-sharing. He repeatedly argued that NATO members must pay up if they were to receive U.S. protection. In July 2016, he said, I want to keep NATO but I want them to pay. I don’t want to be taken advantage of…We’re protecting countries that most of the people in this room have never even heard of and we end up in world war three…Give me a break.”

After taking office Trump claimed credit for a shift on burden sharing and counterterrorism. He told a joint session of Congress that the “money is pouring in. Very nice.” When he met the NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in April, he said: “I complained about that a long time ago, and they made a change — and now they do fight terrorism. I said it was obsolete. It’s no longer obsolete.”

The crucial nuance is that Trump did not say that NATO’s original mission of countering Russian power in Europe is no longer obsolete. Indeed, he has never acknowledged this. The closest he has come is a general statement of strong support with caveats attached for burden sharing and counterterrorism. Trump’s failure to endorse Article 5 is not an oversight. Members of his cabinet have unsuccessfully tried to insert this language into his remarks, including at his meeting with Stoltenberg.

Compare this with Trump’s predecessor. President Obama went to Estonia in 2013 and said:

“I say to the people of Estonia and the people of the Baltics, today we are bound by our treaty Alliance. We have a solemn duty to each other. Article 5 is crystal clear: An attack on one is an attack on all. So if, in such a moment, you ever ask again, ‘who will come to help,’ you’ll know the answer—the NATO Alliance, including the Armed Forces of the United States of America.”

One can criticize President Obama’s Russia policy but he understood the sacred importance of Article 5.

Others in the administration have attempted to compensate for the president’s reticence. Secretary Mattis and Vice President Pence explicitly endorsed Article V of the NATO Treaty at the Munich Security Conference in February of this year. Mattis called it a “bedrock commitment.” Pence said it is “one of two core principles that are central to” NATO’s mission and that U.S. support for the alliance is “unwavering.”

Mattis and Pence have helped bolster U.S. credibility on NATO as has the continuing deployment of U.S. forces and assets to Eastern Europe which began under the Obama administration. But ultimately the decision to uphold U.S. commitments lies with the commander-in-chief. He alone decides whether and how the United States will respond to a Russian attack on a NATO member.

President Trump needs to state his support for NATO’s original mission and America’s solemn commitments if the alliance is to be as effective in the future as it has been in the past. Trump has already moderated his position on U.S. alliances. When he stands beside a piece of the wreckage of the World Trade Center, he should complete his journey and say what every postwar president has said—the United States will stand by its allies in NATO by honoring its commitments under Article 5.

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In “A Wary Embrace,” a new paper from the Lowy Institute for International Policy, Bobo Lo sets out the critical question of whether Russia and China will “define the rules of global politics” in the 21st century. As Western democracies have turned increasingly inward under a backlash against globalization, the notion of a rising Sino-Russian partnership has garnered greater attention. Can a Russo-Chinese partnership form the center of an alternative model to the democratic, market system of the West? How deep does the bond between Moscow and Beijing run?

On May 9, the Project on International Order and Strategy at Brookings hosted Bobo Lo for a discussion of these questions in his new paper. Thomas Wright, director of the Project on International Order and Strategy, moderated a discussion with Lo, alongside David Gordon (Eurasia Group), Philippe Le Corre (Brookings Institution), and Yun Sun (Stimson Center).

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Since the end of World War II, the United States and Europe have promoted and led a global order built on mutual security alliances, multilateral institutions, and the open exchange of goods, ideas, and capital. This liberal order, along with the democratic values that underpin it, was widely recognized as the key driver of peace, prosperity, and freedom across the globe. And then 2016 happened. While dissatisfaction over globalization’s unequal returns and doubts over America’s global leadership were not new, the magnitude of their political impact was unprecedented. Voters in the United Kingdom, one of the wealthiest and largest members of the European Union, decided to withdraw. The American people elected a president highly critical of international alliances, free trade, immigration, interventionism, and other pillars of the global order. Across Europe, populist and nationalist parties surged by channeling rampant dissatisfaction with the status quo and perceptions that migration, globalization, and Brussels itself had overlooked the middle class.

Yet, despite the obituaries written on both sides of the Atlantic, in 2017 the West has endured. Donald Trump’s harsh campaign rhetoric against NATO and in favor of isolationism is being rewritten to accommodate the realities of governance. Dutch voters rejected the anti-immigrant, anti-EU candidates in their March election. In France, the electoral chances of the once-resurgent Marine Le Pen are increasingly slim. Europeans are also coming to view Brexit not as a harbinger for the demise of the EU, but as a crisis mostly for the U.K. But even if the worst does not come to pass for now—is the West’s survival truly assured?

On May 2, the Brookings Center on the United States and Europe, in partnership with the Heinrich Böll Foundation North America, hosted a panel discussion on the survival of the global liberal order. Speakers included Ralf Fücks of the Heinrich Böll Foundation and Robert Kagan and Constanze Stelzenmüller of Brookings. Brookings Fellow Thomas Wright moderated the discussion.

What crossed President Trump’s mind when Bashar Assad launched a chemical weapons strike against civilians? Surely, like most of humanity, his first impulse was revulsion. Trump’s statements condemning the atrocity seemed sincere and genuine. It reminded me a little of his reaction to the Syrian refugee crisis, which erupted in August of 2015, when a three-year old Syrian boy named Alyan Kurdi washed up on a beach, sparking global outrage. Trump was already running an anti-immigration campaign, but he temporarily reversed himself on Syrian refugees because of “the unbelievable humanitarian situation.” “I hate the concept of” allowing refugees in, he told Bill O’Reilly, “but on a humanitarian basis, with what’s happening, you have to.” He would soon reverse himself again, of course, and adopt a harder line than ever. His empathy seemed to have an early expiration date.

It must also have dawned on President Trump this week that his words and actions matter and were not incidental to the crisis. Trump had repeatedly said he would not try to remove Assad, that he would not prioritize human rights, that his singular focus was ISIS, and that he would not act where American interests were not directly threatened. It would be America First. The most obvious explanation for why Assad used chemical weapons against civilians is that he did not think Trump would care. If Trump stuck to his old script, more attacks would surely follow.

If Trump stuck to his old script, more attacks would surely follow.

It is one thing to promise never to intervene in the abstract. It is quite another to be confronted with the reality that your choices are encouraging others to commit mass atrocities. Faced with this, Trump changed his position. President Obama had a similar change of mind and for similar reasons in 2012. Obama had strongly opposed intervention in Libya until Gadhafi’s forces were at the gates of Benghazi threatening to sack it. Obama too had a premonition of what was to come—the massacre of an entire city as he stood by. He reversed suddenly, acted against his instincts, and endorsed a no-fly zone. He did so because he was assured it would be relatively easy and limited. When he found out it was anything but, he felt duped. But he did act at the time.

The main takeaway is that any president will balk at letting mass atrocities happen on his watch when there is a low risk means of preventing an imminent catastrophe. Trump has shown that he is not an exception. The action he took was small and nearly identical to the “pinprick” strike Obama rejected in 2013. It may well succeed. Assad has no strategic interest in doubling down. He values Trump’s support or neutrality too much. He will probably take the hint and stop using chemical weapons, preferring instead to revert to conventional forms of mass murder. Everyone can then return to where they were before the attack. Trump can say he succeeded in deterring Assad. And, Assad and Putin can continue to use Trump for their own purposes.

The big question is whether this portends a general strategic shift for Trump. Will he now happily lead the liberal international order? That remains very unlikely. It is hardly surprising that Trump likes the idea of a once off strike that deters a mass atrocity. It is quite another to invest resources and political capital into an internationalist foreign policy.

The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump poses a unique and difficult challenge for Washington’s democratic allies because of its “America First” foreign policy and cavalier treatment of leaders around the world.

For more than 70 years, the United States has led a liberal international order based on alliance systems, an open global economy, the primacy of rules and institutions, and the promotion of democracy and human rights. Its friends in Asia and other nations sought and maintained alliances with Washington largely because of its role as leader of this liberal order, which underpinned both the security and prosperity of its allies.

Now, that leadership is in jeopardy and—if you take Trump’s rhetoric at face value—the United States seems poised to become a normal great power, looking out only for its own narrow interests with no greater purpose.

Trump is the first postwar president to oppose the liberal order.

Trump did not win the presidency on foreign policy issues. Indeed, polls showed that his rival, Hillary Clinton, was more trusted on this issue and that Americans remain supportive of alliances and trade. But Trump is the first postwar president to oppose the liberal order as he seeks an “America First” foreign policy. This is no political convenience on his part. Trump has a 30-year record of talking about a self-centered U.S. foreign policy.

Trump’s overarching world view is that the United States is in decline because it is being taken advantage of by other countries, particularly its friends and allies. Trump has three visceral beliefs that he has spoken about repeatedly since the mid-1980s. He is deeply skeptical of America’s alliances and believes that the U.S. should only help other nations if it is directly compensated for it. He has opposed every free trade agreement the United States has signed since World War II and supports a more mercantilist approach. He is also supportive of authoritarian strongmen such as Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But it has not been plain sailing for Trump. These beliefs are sincerely held, but they are simplistic and underdeveloped. They are often internally inconsistent. The U.S. foreign policy establishment and many Republicans in Congress are united in opposition to them.

The America First position is only held by a tiny minority within the Trump administration. Trump has a small coterie of advisers, most notably his chief strategist Steve Bannon and the protectionist economist Peter Navarro, who share his outlook, but the heads of the U.S. Defense, State and Treasury departments, along with the new National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, are all mainstreamers when it comes to protecting U.S. alliances and the global economy.

Divided government

The result is a structural incoherence in which the America First faction is in constant combat with the mainstreamers, who are in a stronger position to win most, although not all, of the day-to-day fights. The main risk is that Trump’s America First faction may be particularly influential when a crisis erupts, given the unavoidable centrality of the commander-in-chief.

As they survey the new landscape in Washington, America’s allies can be forgiven for being perturbed and confused. Who really speaks for the United States? Should they stand up to a president many people find anathema to their values? Is the liberal international order at an end? Should nations in Asia and elsewhere go it alone and look out for their own interests instead of pursuing a broader vision of international order? And for America’s Asian allies—from Australia to South Korea—is the question of whether they should distance themselves from Washington and acquiesce in organizing the region based on China’s security and economic preferences.

Foreign policy choices are not just about trade deals, an alliance or the controversies of the day. Fundamentally, foreign policy choices are about values as well as interests and the type of world we want to live in.

It is right and proper that America’s allies should have this debate among its citizens and with each other. But when they do, they should remember some fundamental principles. Foreign policy choices are not just about trade deals, an alliance or the controversies of the day. Fundamentally, foreign policy choices are about values as well as interests and the type of world we want to live in. In 2017, there are two worlds on offer.

One world emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union and is built around a liberal international order. The second is a 19th century-style multipolar world order where each great power carves out its own spheres of influence, with China preeminent in East Asia, Russia in Eastern Europe, and the U.S. in the Americas. In this world, each great power sticks to its own backyard except when it is directly threatened or can profit from intervention. All nations pursue their own narrow interests, discarding rules, values and any notions of fairness.

It is hard to exaggerate how different the world—and each region—would be under the latter model and how detrimental it would be to their citizens. The 19th century world was one of mercantilism, empires, domination, and conflict.

In his support for protectionism and nationalism and opposition to globalism, alliances and free trade, Trump would usher in a 19th century model of world politics. Yet he faces fierce opposition at home. This goes beyond mere rhetoric. Congress threatened to overrule him if he lifted sanctions on Russia. After his call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, there was a groundswell of bipartisan criticism from congressional leaders about the president’s behavior. There is a concerted effort to empower mainstreamers within the Trump administration.

America’s U.S. allies face a dilemma. By giving up on the United States and the liberal international order, they would be advancing Trump’s ultimate goal of a 19th century world. Cutting deals with China or Russia and abandoning broader aspirations would not only flout democratic values and entail massive costs and risks but would also be the ultimate endorsement of Trump’s worldview.

The better alternative is to work with mainstream elements within the Trump administration and promote cooperation among regional democracies such as Australia, Japan, and India to prevent a general unraveling of the liberal order and buy time for the United States to deliver its ultimate verdict on Trumpism through the election process, which may come sooner rather than later. Too much has been accomplished over the past 70 years to prematurely surrender hopes of a better world.